It seems that The Pokemon Company has quite a few… interesting games lined up for the next year or so. These include: a better Pokemon Bank, sleeping, Detective Pikachu 2: Thunderbolt Boogaloo, Pokemon Masters, and of course the mainline titles of Sword and Shield.
Starting off, there was a recent Pokemon Conference which revealed those first four items. Detective Pikachu on Switch makes sense and hopefully is a sequel so I don’t have to buy the original but again. Home and Sleep are inconsequential; Home being Pokemon Bank but compatible with Amazon Alexa, and Sleep being the Pokemon Go Plus+ and Knuckles featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry series with New Funky Mode. However, Pokemon Masters has me the most excited out of all these announcements, as it looks like a gacha mobile game but with actual canon characters from the Pokemon Adventures manga.
And then of course, there’s the Sword and Shield Direct coming up on Wednesday. This is what catches my eye the most for two reasons. First, it’s our first actual, full look at the game in all its glory. Second, it’s the second Direct in about a month’s time and directly before E3. What kind of coincidence is that? No kind, I say. This must have been set up so that two of the biggest Switch games of the year were already taken care of pre-E3, and thus Nintendo has something tricky up their sleeves for the actual E3 presentation. Personally, I believe this means Metroid Prime 4, more spotlight on FE: Three Houses, at least one or two more Smash characters, and the announcement and maybe release window for Pikmin 4.
Challenger’s Pack 1. The big ‘un. The thing announced the day that Ultimate released that would go on to be subsequently cooler and cooler… somehow. And yet it’s finally here. Joker from Persona 5 as a playable fighter in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat here: I had no knowledge of P5 when they announced Joker, and now that he is out I know EVERYTHING about it, due to my wanting to learn more so I could properly evaluate Joker when he released. And my initial one-week impressions? Hot diggety dog, this character is a load of fun.
Good-Feel is the developer behind some of the more adventurous titles in Nintendo’s lineup, including Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Yoshi’s Woolly World, and Wario Land: Shake It. Although they just received commendations for the recent release of Yoshi’s Crafted World, I feel as though they are kind of overlooked quite often. So I’m gonna talk about why I like them as a company here, and specifically which game I believe is most overlooked. And out of the one-in-three chance here, the game I think stands out most is Wario Land. The game is vibrant, the gameplay is great, and the music is on-point. It’s a great entry in the series, and I honestly wish that it was released on the Switch because of all of these good qualities. This is one thing that really stays constant across all of the company’s games; the graphics and music are all very good (though I’ve heard that Crafted World’s music is a little worse than usual). I wish Good-Feel got more recognition and made more games for Nintendo, but what can you really do?
But although the series has a storied and interesting past, today we’re here to talk about the latest installment: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Let’s start off by getting into the aforementioned diverse roster of characters. Of course, Nintendo staples such as Mario (voiced by Charles Martinet for the 100th game total), Link (in his recent Breath of the Wild garb), Kirby, Pikachu, Samus, and more are all present, but in this entry series creator Masahiro Sakurai went all-out by adding many fan-requested characters to the fray. Popular requests such as Ridley, King K. Rool, Daisy, Dark Samus, and Simon Belmont were put into the game. Additionally, Sakurai brought every previous playable character back including more favorites like Snake, Pokemon Trainer, and the Ice Climbers.
Some of the finer details in this game don’t really stand out too much, but are very helpful quality of life changes. For example, now you can save custom rulesets with all sorts of new options, such as turning hazards off, changing the mode type (including a new option for Stamina mode in the main lineup), and even adding the ability to switch between stages mid-match via the Stage Morph feature. The changes to Classic Mode are a bit more apparent, as each character gets their own version of it. There was even a new mode based off of Subspace Emissary’s character switching called Squad Strike. Even most characters have minor animation buffs that make them look better, and even add more references to their series.
Alright, so Ultimate has been out for a little more than a month now and I haven’t stopped playing it in my free time (except to pick up a fabulous 3DS remake- more on that next post). I picked up a new main, tested glitches galore, and in general had a yabba-dabba-doo time. And hey, I even not only got involved in, but CREATED a competitive scene at my school. But rather than review the game and tell you if you should buy the game, I feel more like just describing my experiences with it. Because if you have a Switch but not Smash Ultimate, you’re definitely missing out.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl is what I was raised on. I was around 6 or 7 when it came out, and had no idea what a “Smash Bros” was. But the first time the game clicked to me, the childlike wonder I felt playing Subspace…
Alright, lemme back up a bit. As many of you know, November 1st marked our final Smash Direct before the game released. And hoo boy, it was a doozy. Although many people (myself included) were quite depressed to see the infamous Grinch leak be proven fake, Sakurai roped us back in slowly but surely, using a plant and approximately 740 Master Hands. Yep, he announced Piranha Plant as preorder DLC as a new fighter, and World of Light as the new adventure mode, which looks absolutely amazing, to be honest.
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